· Introduction· What is CRF and its types· How is it different

· Introduction
· What is CRF and its types
· How is it different than other prediction tools
· Disadvantages and Advantages
· Method
· Why we are using graphical CRF and how is it different than
others
· Detail explanation of Pystruct
· How we train them before feeding the actual data
The Wall Reflection
When this work was fresh in the public eye, the ending was new
and disruptive. It was frightening in its “chance.” With us and
our experiences, “not so much.”
The screw that turns the notches of pain is a physician, one
trained to save lives. But here he practices psychological
torment – a sort of Mengele.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi -
medical-experiments
There are three prisoners and they are a really diverse group. In
common is that they are all male, all accused of crimes against
the state and sentenced to die. The watchers “watch” how each
responds to death coming closer with the knowledge thatthere is
nothing that they can do to stop it.
There is the wall whose image serves a few purposes. There is
a wall between life and death. There is a wall which defines
behaviors for as long as they can be maintained. There is the
wall between those who are condemned and those who are not.
There is the wall against which people are stood and then shot.

Sartre’s existentialism focuses on choice. People and cultures
may be defined by their choices. EX: Manhood by personal
choice or in a certain culture may not include pushing a baby
carriage. Making choices requires responsibility for decision
making. This can lead to almost constant questioning of
possibilities, a certain mindfulness. If I do X, then Y or Z, or
AA can result. They could be taken into subsets of each –
almost like backtracking DNA through the generations. How
one conducts himself/herself is who he or she is. The problem
is free will with its constant questioning. It seems obvious that
choices define us, but Sartre’s was then a newer way at looking
at the, at times, quirkiness of life events and situations.
So there you have it. Be in the wrong place at the wrong time,
say the word incorrectly (Farming of Bones foreshadowing), do
not move quickly enough or too slowly, all is choice –the pain
of freedom.
The Wall
John-Paul Sartre
Sartre developed the concept of existentialism. An overview of
the philosophy follows.
John Paul Sartre and the Existential Choice
The existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre thought that human beings
live in anguish. Not because life is terrible. But rather because,
we’re ‘condemned to be free’. We're ‘thrown’ into existence,
become aware of ourselves, and have to make choices. Even
deciding not to choose is a choice. According to Sartre, every
choice reveals what we think a human being should be.
Narrated by Stephen Fry. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpXNRrtuo38

War is hell.
Existentialism is a response to the “unfathomable” horrors that
result from man’s choices.
Sartre published The Wall at almost the same time –summer
2937—as Picasso finished Guernica. Guernica was bombed in
April 1937.
The Wall (short story) 1939 | JeanThe Wall (short story) 1939 |
JeanThe Wall (short story) 1939 | JeanThe Wall (short story)
1939 | Jean----Paul SARTREPaul SARTREPaul SARTREPaul
SARTRE
They pushed us into a big white room and I began to blink
because the light hurt my eyes. Then I saw a table and four
men behind the table, civilians, looking over the papers. They
had bunched another group of prisoners in the back and we had

to cross the whole room to join them. There were several I
knew and some others who must have been foreigners. The two
in front of me were blond with round skulls: they looked alike. I
supposed they were French. The smaller one kept hitching up
his pants: nerves.
It lasted about three hours: I was dizzy and my head was
empty; but the room was well heated and I found that pleasant
enough: for the past 24 hours we hadn't stopped shivering. The
guards brought the
prisoners up to the table, one after the other. The four men
asked each one his name
and occupation. Most of the time they didn't go any further--or
they would simply ask
a question here and there: "Did you have anything to do with
the sabotage of
munitions?" Or "Where were you the morning of the 9th and
what were you doing?"
They didn't listen to the answers or at least didn't seem to. They
were quiet for a
moment and then looking straight in front of them began to
write. They asked Tom if it
were true he was in the International Brigade: Tom couldn't tell
them otherwise
because of the papers they found in his coat. They didn't ask
Juan anything but they
wrote for a long time after he told them his name.
"My brother Jose is the anarchist," Juan said "You know he isn't
here any more. I don't
belong to any party. I never had anything to do with politics."
They didn't answer. Juan went on, "I haven't done anything. I
don't want to pay for
somebody else."

His lips trembled. A guard shut him up and took him away. It
was my turn.
"Your name is Pablo Ibbieta?"
"Yes."
The man looked at the papers and asked me "Where's Ramon
Gris?"
"I don't know."
"You hid him in your house from the 6th to the 19th."
"No."
Page 1 of 14The Wall (1939) | Jean-Paul Sartre
5/28/2009http://pagesperso-
orange.fr/chabrieres/texts/sartre_thewall.html
They wrote for a minute and then the guards took me out. In the
corridor Tom and
Juan were waiting between two guards. We started walking.
Tom asked one of the
guards, "So?"
"So what?" the guard said.
"Was that the cross-examination or the sentence?"
"Sentence" the guard said.

"What are they going to do with us?"
The guard answered dryly, "Sentence will be read in your cell."
As a matter of fact, our cell was one of the hospital cellars. It
was terrifically cold there
because of the drafts. We shivered all night and it wasn't much
better during the day.
I had spent the previous five days in a cell in a monastery, a
sort of hole in the wall
that must have dated from the middle ages: since there were a
lot of prisoners and
not much room, they locked us up anywhere. I didn't miss my
cell; I hadn't suffered
too much from the cold but I was alone; after a long time it gets
irritating. In the cellar
I had company. Juan hardly ever spoke: he was afraid and he
was too young to have
anything to say. But Tom was a good talker and he knew
Spanish well.
There was a bench in the cellar and four mats. When they took
us back we sat and
waited in silence. After a long moment, Tom said, "We're
screwed."
"l think so too," I said, "but I don't think they'll do any thing to
the kid.".
"They don't have a thing against him," said Tom. "He's the
brother of a militiaman and
that's all."
I looked at Juan: he didn't seem to hear. Tom went on, "You
know what they do in
Saragossa? They lay the men down on the road and run over

them with trucks. A
Moroccan deserter told us that. They said it was to save
ammunition."
"It doesn't save gas." I said.
I was annoyed at Tom: he shouldn't have said that.
"Then there's officers walking along the road," he went on,
"supervising it all. They
stick their hands in their pockets and smoke cigarettes. You
think they finish off the
guys? Hell no. They let them scream. Sometimes for an hour.
The Moroccan said he
damned near puked the first time."
"I don't believe they'll do that here," I said. "Unless they're
really short on
ammunition."
Day was coming in through four air holes and a round opening
they had made in the
ceiling on the left, and you could see the sky through it.
Through this hole, usually
closed by a trap, they unloaded coal into the cellar. Just below
the hole there was a
big pile of coal dust: it had been used to heat the hospital, but
since the beginning of
the war the patients were evacuated and the coal stayed there,
unused; sometimes it

even got rained on because they had forgotten to close the trap.
Tom began to shiver. "Good Jesus Christ, I'm cold," he said.
"Here it goes again."
He got up and began to do exercises. At each movement his
shirt opened on his chest,
white and hairy. He lay on his back, raised his legs in the air
and bicycled. I saw his
great rump trembling. Tom was husky but he had too much fat. I
thought how riffle
bullets or the sharp points of bayonets would soon be sunk into
this mass of tender
flesh as in a lump of butter. It wouldn't have made me feel like
that if he'd been thin.
I wasn't exactly cold, but I couldn't feel my arms and shoulders
any more. Sometimes
I had the impression I was missing something and began to look
around for my coat
and then suddenly remembered they hadn't given me a coat. It
was rather
uncomfortable. They took our clothes and gave them to their
soldiers leaving us only
our shirts--and those canvas pants that hospital patients wear in
the middle of
summer. After a while Tom got up and sat next to me, breathing
heavily.
"Warmer?"
"Good Christ, no. But I'm out of wind."
Around eight o'clock in the evening a major came in with two

falangistas. He had a
sheet of paper in his hand. He asked the guard, "What are the
names of those three?"
"Steinbock, Ibbieta and Mirbal," the guard said.
The major put on his eyeglasses and scanned the list:
"Steinbock...Steinbock...Oh
yes...You are sentenced to death. You will be shot tomorrow
morning." He went on
looking. "The other two as well."
"That's not possible," Juan said. "Not me." The major looked at
him amazed. "What's
your name?"
"Juan Mirbal" he said.
"Well your name is there," said the major. "You're sentenced."
"I didn't do anything," Juan said.
The major shrugged his shoulders and turned to Tom and me.
"You're Basque?"
"Nobody is Basque."
He looked annoyed. "They told me there were three Basques.
I'm not going to waste
my time running after them. Then naturally you don't want a
priest?"
We didn't even answer.
He said, "A Belgian doctor is coming shortly. He is authorized

to spend the night with
you." He made a military salute and left.
"What did I tell you," Tom said. "We get it."
"Yes, I said, "it's a rotten deal for the kid."
I said that to be decent but I didn't like the kid. His face was too
thin and fear and
suffering had disfigured it, twisting all his features. Three days
before he was a smart
sort of kid, not too bad; but now he looked like an old fairy and
I thought how he'd
never be young again, even if they were to let him go. It
wouldn't have been too hard
to have a little pity for him but pity disgusts me, or rather it
horrifies me. He hadn't
said anything more but he had turned grey; his face and hands
were both grey. He sat
down again and looked at the ground with round eyes. Tom was
good hearted, he
wanted to take his arm, but the kid tore himself away violently
and made a face.
"Let him alone," I said in a low voice, "you can see he's going
to blubber."
Tom obeyed regretfully: he would have liked to comfort the kid,
it would have passed

his time and he wouldn't have been tempted to think about
himself. But it annoyed
me: I'd never thought about death because I never had any
reason to, but now the
reason was here and there was nothing to do but think about it.
Tom began to talk. "So you think you've knocked guys off, do
you?" he asked me. I
didn't answer. He began explaining to me that he had knocked
off six since the
beginning of August; he didn't realize the situation and I could
tell he didn't want to
realize it. I hadn't quite realized it myself, I wondered if it hurt
much, I thought of
bullets, I imagined their burning hail through my body. All that
was beside the real
question; but I was calm: we had all night to understand. After a
while Tom stopped
talking and I watched him out of the corner of my eye; I saw he
too had turned grey
and he looked rotten; I told myself "Now it starts." It was
almost dark, a dim glow
filtered through the air holes and the pile of coal and made a big
stain beneath the
spot of sky; I could already see a star through the hole in the
ceiling: the night would
be pure and icy.
The door opened and two guards came in, followed by a blonde
man in a tan uniform.
He saluted us. "I am the doctor," he said. "I have authorization
to help you in these
trying hours."
He had an agreeable and distinguished voice. I said, "What do
you want here?"

"I am at your disposal. I shall do all I can to make your last
moments less difficult."
"What did you come here for? There are others, the hospital's
full of them."
"I was sent here," he answered with a vague look. "Ah! Would
you like to smoke?" he
added hurriedly, "I have cigarettes and even cigars."
He offered us English cigarettes and puros, but we refused. I
looked him in the eyes
and he seemed irritated. I said to him, "You aren't here on an
errand of mercy.
Besides, I know you. I saw you with the fascists in the barracks
yard the day I was
arrested."
I was going to continue, but something surprising suddenly
happened to me; the
presence of this doctor no longer interested me. Generally when
I'm on somebody I
don't let go. But the desire to talk left me completely; I
shrugged and turned my eyes
away. A little later I raised my head; he was watching me
curiously. The guards were
sitting on a mat. Pedro, the tall thin one, was twiddling his

thumbs, the other shook
his head from time to time to keep from falling asleep.
"Do you want a light?" Pedro suddenly asked the doctor. The
other nodded "Yes": I
think he was about as smart as a log, but he surely wasn't bad.
Looking in his cold
blue eyes it seemed to me that his only sin was lack of
imagination. Pedro went out
and came back with an oil lamp which he set on the corner of
the bench. It gave a bad
light but it was better than nothing: they had left us in the dark
the night before. For a
long time I watched the circle of light the lamp made on the
ceiling. I was fascinated.
Then suddenly I woke up, the circle of light disappeared and I
felt myself crushed
under an enormous weight. It was not the thought of death, or
fear; it was nameless.
My cheeks burned and my head ached.
I shook myself and looked at my two friends. Tom had hidden
his face in his hands. I
could only see the fat white nape of his neck. Little Juan was
the worst, his mouth was
open and his nostrils trembled. The doctor went to him and put
his hand on his
shoulder to comfort him: but his eyes stayed cold. Then I saw
the Belgian's hand drop
stealthily along Juan's arm, down to the wrist. Juan paid no
attention. The Belgian took
his wrist between three fingers, distractedly, the same time
drawing back a little and
turning his back to me. But I leaned backward and saw him take
a watch from his
pocket and look at it for a moment, never letting go of the wrist.

After a minute he let
the hand fall inert and went and leaned his back against the
wall, then, as if he
suddenly remembered something very important which had to be
jotted down on the
spot, he took a notebook from his pocket and wrote a few lines.
"Bastard," I thought
angrily, "let him come and take my pulse. I'll shove my fist in
his rotten face."
He didn't come but I felt him watching me. I raised my head and
returned his look.
Impersonally, he said to me "Doesn't it seem cold to you here?"
He looked cold, he
was blue.
I'm not cold," I told him.
He never took his hard eyes off me. Suddenly I understood and
my hands went to my
face: I was drenched in sweat. In this cellar, in the midst of
winter, in the midst of
drafts, I was sweating. I ran my hands through my hair, gummed
together with
perspiration: at the same time I saw my shirt was damp and
sticking to my skin: I had
been dripping for an hour and hadn't felt it. But that swine of a
Belgian hadn't missed
a thing; he had seen the drops rolling down my cheeks and
thought: this is the
manifestation of an almost pathological state of terror; and he
had felt normal and
proud of being alive because he was cold. I wanted to stand up
and smash his face but
no sooner had I made the slightest gesture than my rage and
shame were wiped out;

I fell back on the bench with indifference.
I satisfied myself by rubbing my neck with my handkerchief
because now I felt the
sweat dropping from my hair onto my neck and it was
unpleasant. I soon gave up
rubbing, it was useless; my handkerchief was already soaked
and I was still sweating.
My buttocks were sweating too and my damp trousers were
glued to the bench.
Suddenly Juan spoke. "You're a doctor?"
"Yes," the Belgian said.
"Does it hurt... very long?"
"Huh? When... ? Oh, no" the Belgian said paternally "Not at all.
It's over quickly." He
acted as though he were calming a cash customer.
"But I... they told me... sometimes they have to fire twice."
"Sometimes," the Belgian said, nodding. "It may happen that the
first volley reaches
no vital organs."
"Then they have to reload their rifles and aim all over again?"
He thought for a

moment and then added hoarsely, "That takes time!"
He had a terrible fear of suffering, it was all he thought about:
it was his age. I never
thought much about it and it wasn't fear of suffering that made
me sweat.
I got up and walked to the pile of coal dust. Tom jumped up and
threw me a hateful
look: I had annoyed him because my shoes squeaked. I
wondered if my face looked as
frightened as his: I saw he was sweating too. The sky was
superb, no light filtered into
the dark corner and I had only to raise my head to see the Big
Dipper. But it wasn't
like it had been: the night before I could see a great piece of sky
from my monastery
cell and each hour of the day brought me a different memory.
Morning, when the sky
was a hard, light blue, I thought of beaches on the Atlantic: at
noon I saw the sun and
I remembered a bar in Seville where I drank manzanilla and ate
olives and anchovies:
afternoons I was in the shade and I thought of the deep shadow
which spreads over
half a bull-ring leaving the other half shimmering in sunlight: it
was really hard to see
the whole world reflected in the sky like that. But now I could
watch the sky as much
as I pleased, it no longer evoked anything tn me. I liked that
better. I came back and
sat near Tom. A long moment passed.
Tom began speaking in a low voice. He had to talk, without that
he wouldn't have been
able no recognize himself in his own mind. I thought he was

talking to me but he
wasn't looking at me. He was undoubtedly afraid to see me as I
was, grey and
sweating: we were alike and worse than mirrors of each other.
He watched the
Belgian, the living.
"Do you understand?" he said. "I don't understand."
I began to speak in a low voice too. I watched the Belgian.
"Why? What's the matter?"
"Something is going to happen to us than I can't understand."
There was a strange smell about Tom. It seemed to me I was
more sensitive than
usual to odors. I grinned. "You'll understand in a while."
"It isn't clear," he said obstinately. "I want to be brave but first
I have to know. . .
.Listen, they're going to take us into the courtyard. Good.
They're going to stand up in
front of us. How many?"
"l don't know. Five or eight. Not more."
"All right. There'll be eight. Someone'll holler 'aim!' and I'll see
eight rifles looking at
me. I'll think how I'd like to get inside the wall, I'll push against
it with my back. . . .

with every ounce of strength I have, but the wall will stay, like
in a nightmare. I can
imagine all that. If you only knew how well I can imagine it."
"All right, all right!" I said. "I can imagine it too."
"lt must hurt like hell. You know they aim at the eyes and the
mouth to disfigure you,"
he added mechanically. "I can feel the wounds already. I've had
pains in my head and
in my neck for the past hour. Not real pains. Worse. This is
what I'm going to feel
tomorrow morning. And then what?"
I well understood what he meant but I didn't want to act as if I
did. I had pains too,
pains in my body like a crowd of tiny scars. I couldn't get used
to it. But I was like
him. I attached no importance to it. "After," I said. "you'll be
pushing up daisies."
He began to talk to himself: he never stopped watching the
Belgian. The Belgian didn't
seem to be listening. I knew what he had come to do; he wasn't
interested in what we
thought; he came to watch our bodies, bodies dying in agony
while yet alive.
"It's like a nightmare," Tom was saying. "You want to think
something, you always
have the impression that it's all right, that you're going to
understand and then it slips,
it escapes you and fades away. I tell myself there will be
nothing afterwards. But I

don't understand what it means. Sometimes I almost can.... and
then it fades away
and I start thinking about the pains again, bullets, explosions.
I'm a materialist, I
swear it to you; I'm not going crazy. But something's the matter.
I see my corpse;
that's not hard but I'm the one who sees it, with my eyes. I've
got to think... think
that I won't see anything anymore and the world will go on for
the others. We aren't
made to think that, Pablo. Believe me: I've already stayed up a
whole night waiting for
something. But this isn't the same: this will creep up behind us,
Pablo, and we won't
be able to prepare for it."
"Shut up," I said, "Do you want me to call a priest?"
He didn't answer. I had already noticed he had the tendency to
act like a prophet and
call me Pablo, speaking in a toneless voice. I didn't like that:
but it seems all the Irish
are that way. I had the vague impression he smelled of urine.
Fundamentally, I hadn't
much sympathy for Tom and I didn't see why, under the pretext
of dying together, I
should have any more. It would have been different with some
others. With Ramon
Gris, for example. But I felt alone between Tom and Juan. I
liked that better, anyhow:
with Ramon I might have been more deeply moved. But I was
terribly hard just then
and I wanted to stay hard.
He kept on chewing his words, with something like distraction.
He certainly talked to

keep himself from thinking. He smelled of urine like an old
prostate case. Naturally, I
agreed with him. I could have said everything he said: it isn't
natural to die. And since
I was going to die, nothing seemed natural to me, not this pile
of coal dust, or the
bench, or Pedro's ugly face. Only it didn't please me to think the
same things as Tom.
And I knew that, all through the night, every five minutes, we
would keep on thinking
things at the same time. I looked at him sideways and for the
first time he seemed
strange to me: he wore death on his face. My pride was
wounded: for the past 24
hours I had lived next to Tom, I had listened to him. I had
spoken to him and I knew
we had nothing in common. And now we looked as much alike
as twin brothers, simply
because we were going to die together. Tom took my hand
without looking at me.
"Pablo. I wonder... I wonder if it's really true that everything
ends."
I took my hand away and said, "Look between your feet, you
pig."
There was a big puddle between his feet and drops fell from his
pants-leg.

"What is it," he asked, frightened.
"You're pissing in your pants," I told him.
"lt isn't true," he said furiously. "I'm not pissing. I
don't feel anything."
The Belgian approached us. He asked with false solicitude. "Do
you feel ill?"
Tom did not answer. The Belgian looked at the puddle and said
nothing.
"I don't know what it is," Tom said ferociously. "But I'm not
afraid. I swear I'm not
afraid."
The Belgian did not answer. Tom got up and went to piss in a
corner. He came back
buttoning his fly, and sat down without a word. The Belgian
was taking notes.
All three of us watched him because he was alive. He had the
motions of a living
human being, the cares of a living human being; he shivered in
the cellar the way the
living are supposed to shiver; he had an obedient, well -fed
body. The rest of us hardly
felt ours--not in the same way anyhow. I wanted to feel my
pants between my legs
but I didn't dare; I watched the Belgian, balancing on his legs,
master of his muscles,
someone who could think about tomorrow. There we were, three
bloodless shadows;

we watched him and we sucked his life like vampires.
Finally he went over to little Juan. Did he want to feel his neck
for some professional
motive or was he obeying an impulse of charity? If he was
acting by charity it was the
only time during the whole night.
He caressed Juan's head and neck. The kid let himself be
handled, his eyes never
leaving him, then suddenly he seized the hand and looked at it
strangely. He held the
Belgian's hand between his own two hands and there was
nothing pleasant about
them, two grey pincers gripping this fat and reddish hand. I
suspected what was going
to happen and Tom must have suspected it too: but the Belgian
didn't see a thing, he
smiled paternally. After a moment the kid brought the fat red
hand to his mouth and
tried to bite it. The Belgian pulled away quickly and stumbled
back against the wall.
For a second he looked at us with horror, he must have suddenly
understood that we
were not men like him. I began to laugh and one of the guards
jumped up. The other
was asleep, his wide open eyes were blank.
I felt relaxed and over-excited at the same time. I didn't want to
think any more about
what would happen at dawn, at death. It made no sense. I only
found words or
emptiness. But as soon as I tried to think of anything else I saw
rifle barrels pointing
at me. Perhaps I lived through my execution twenty times; once
I even thought it was

for good: I must have slept a minute. They were dragging me to
the wall and I was
struggling; I was asking for mercy. I woke up with a start and
looked at the Belgian: I
was afraid I might have cried out in my sleep. But he was
stroking his moustache, he
hadn't noticed anything. If I had wanted to, I think I could have
slept a while; I had
been awake for 48 hours. I was at the end of my rope. But I
didn't want to lose two
hours of life; they would come to wake me up at dawn. I would
follow them, stupefied
with sleep and I would have croaked without so much as an
"Oof!"; I didn't want that.
I didn't want to die like an animal, I wanted to understand. Then
I was afraid of having
nightmares. I got up, walked back and forth, and, to change my
ideas, I began to
think about my past life. A crowd of memories came back to me
pell-mell. There were
good and bad ones--or at least I called them that before. There
were faces and
incidents. I saw the face of a little novillero who was gored tn
Valencia during the
Feria, the face of one of my uncles, the face of Ramon Gris. I
remembered my whole
life: how I was out of work for three months in 1926, how I
almost starved to death. I

remembered a night I spent on a bench in Granada: I hadn't
eaten for three days. I
was angry, I didn't want to die. That made me smile. How madly
I ran after happiness,
after women, after liberty. Why? I wanted to free Spain, I
admired Pi y Margall, I
joined the anarchist movement, I spoke in public meetings: I
took everything as
seriously as if I were immortal.
At that moment I felt that I had my whole life in front of me and
I thought, "It's a
damned lie." It was worth nothing because it was finished. I
wondered how I'd been
able to walk, to laugh with the girls: I wouldn't have moved so
much as my little finger
if I had only imagined I would die like this. My life was in front
of me, shut, closed, like
a bag and yet everything inside of it was unfinished. For an
instant I tried to judge it. I
wanted to tell myself, this is a beautiful life. But I couldn't pass
judgment on it; it was
only a sketch; I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity, I had
understood nothing. I
missed nothing: there were so many things I could have missed,
the taste of
manzanilla or the baths I took in summer in a little creek near
Cadiz; but death had
disenchanted everything.
The Belgian suddenly had a bright idea. "My friends," he told
us, "I will undertake--if
the military administration will allow it--to send a message for
you, a souvenir to those
who love you. . . ."

Tom mumbled, "I don't have anybody."
I said nothing. Tom waited an instant then looked at me with
curiosity. "You don't
have anything to say to Concha?"
"No."
I hated this tender complicity: it was my own fault, I had talked
about Concha the
night before. I should have controlled myself. I was with her for
a year. Last night I
would have given an arm to see her again for five minutes. That
was why I talked
about her, it was stronger than I was. Now I had no more desire
to see her, I had
nothing more to say to her. I would not even have wanted to
hold her in my arms: my
body filled me with horror because it was grey and sweating--
and I wasn't sure that
her body didn't fill me with horror. Concha would cry when she
found out I was dead,
she would have no taste for life for months afterward. But I was
still the one who was
going to die. I thought of her soft, beautiful eyes. When she
looked at me something
passed from her to me. But I knew it was over: if she looked at
me now the look
would stay in her eyes, it wouldn't reach me. I was alone.
Tom was alone too but not in the same way. Sitting cross-
legged, he had begun to
stare at the bench with a sort of smile, he looked amazed. He
put out his hand and

touched the wood cautiously as if he were afraid of breaking
something, then drew
back his hand quickly and shuddered. If I had been Tom I
wouldn't have amused
myself by touching the bench; this was some more Irish
nonsense, but I too found
that objects had a funny look: they were more obliterated, less
dense than usual. It
was enough for me to look at the bench, the lamp, the pile of
coal dust, to feel that I
was going to die. Naturally I couldn't think clearly about my
death but I saw it
everywhere, on things, in the way things fell back and kept their
distance, discreetly,
as people who speak quietly at the bedside of a dying man. It
was his death which
Tom had just touched on the bench.
In the state I was in, if someone had come and told me I could
go home quietly, that
they would leave me my life whole, it would have left me cold:
several hours or
several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the
illusion of being
eternal. I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a
horrible calm--because of
my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but
it was no longer me;
it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn't recognize it any
more. I had to touch it

and look at it to find out what was happening, as if it were the
body of someone else.
At times I could still feel it, I felt sinkings, and fallings, as
when you're in a plane
taking a nose dive, or I felt my heart beating. But that didn't
reassure me. Everything
that came from my body was all cockeyed. Most of the time it
was quiet and I felt no
more than a sort of weight, a filthy presence against me; I had
the impression of being
tied to an enormous vermin. Once I felt my pants and I felt they
were damp; I didn't
know whether it was sweat or urine, but I went to piss on the
coal pile as a precaution.
The Belgian took out his watch, looked at it. He said, "It is
three-thirty."
Bastard! He must have done it on purpose. Tom jumped; we
hadn't noticed time was
running out; night surrounded us like a shapeless, somber mass.
I couldn't even
remember that it had begun.
Little Juan began to cry. He wrung his hands, pleaded, "I don't
want to die. I don't
want to die."
He ran across the whole cellar waving his arms in the air then
fell sobbing on one of
the mats. Tom watched him with mournful eyes, without the
slightest desire to console
him. Because it wasn't worth the trouble: the kid made more
noise than we did, but he
was less touched: he was like a sick man who defends himself
against his illness by

fever. It's much more serious when there isn't any fever.
He wept: I could clearly see he was pitying himself; he wasn't
thinking about death.
For one second, one single second, I wanted to weep myself, to
weep with pity for
myself. But the opposite happened: I glanced at the kid, I saw
his thin sobbing
shoulders and I felt inhuman: I could pity neither the others nor
myself. I said to
myself, "I want to die cleanly."
Tom had gotten up, he placed himself just under the round
opening and began to
watch for daylight. I was determined to die cleanly and I only
thought of that. But ever
since the doctor told us the time, I felt time flying, flowing
away drop by drop.
It was still dark when I heard Tom's voice: "Do you hear them?"
Men were marching in the courtyard.
"Yes."
"What the hell are they doing? They can't shoot in the dark."
After a while we heard no more. I said to Tom, "It's day."

Pedro got up, yawning, and came to blow out the lamp. He said
to his buddy, "Cold as
hell."
The cellar was all grey. We heard shots in the distance.
"It's starting," I told Tom. "They must do it in the court in the
rear."
Tom asked the doctor for a cigarette. I didn't want one; I didn't
want cigarettes or
alcohol. From that moment on they didn't stop firing.
"Do you realize what's happening," Tom said.
He wanted to add something but kept quiet, watching the door.
The door opened and
a lieutenant came in with four soldiers. Tom dropped his
cigarette.
"Steinbock?"
Tom didn't answer. Pedro pointed him out.
"Juan Mirbal?"
"On the mat."
"Get up," the lieutenant said.
Juan did not move. Two soldiers took him under the arms and
set him on his feet. But
he fell as soon as they released him.
The soldiers hesitated.

"He's not the first sick one," said the lieutenant. "You two carry
him: they'll fix it up
down there."
He turned to Tom. "Let's go."
Tom went out between two soldiers. Two others followed,
carrying the kid by the
armpits. He hadn't fainted; his eyes were wide open and tears
ran down his cheeks.
When I wanted to go out the lieutenant stopped me.
"You Ibbieta?"
"Yes."
"You wait here: they'll come for you later."
They left. The Belgian and the two jailers left too, I was alone.
I did not understand
what was happening to me but I would have liked it better if
they had gotten it over
with right away. I heard shots at almost regular intervals; I
shook with each one of
them. I wanted to scream and tear out my hair. But I gritted my
teeth and pushed my
hands in my pockets because I wanted to stay clean.
After an hour they came to get me and led me to the first floor,

to a small room that
smelt of cigars and where the heat was stifling. There were two
officers sitting
smoking in the armchairs, papers on their knees.
"You're Ibbieta?"
"Yes."
"Where is Ramon Gris?"
"l don't know."
The one questioning me was short and fat. His eyes were hard
behind his glasses. He
said to me, "Come here."
I went to him. He got up and took my arms, staring at me with a
look that should have
pushed me into the earth. At the same time he pinched my
biceps with all his might. It
wasn't to hurt me, it was only a game: he wanted to dominate
me. He also thought he
had to blow his stinking breath square in my face. We stayed for
a moment like that,
and I almost felt like laughing. It takes a lot to intimidate a man
who is going to die; it
didn't work. He pushed me back violently and sat down again.
He said, "It's his life
against yours. You can have yours if you tell us where he is."
These men dolled up with their riding crops and boots were still
going to die. A little
later than I, but not too much. They busied themselves looking
for names in their
crumpled papers, they ran after other men to imprison or

suppress them: they had
opinions on the future of Spain and on other subjects. Their
little activities seemed
shocking and burlesqued to me; I couldn't put myself in their
place. I thought they
were insane. The little man was still looking at me, whipping
his boots with the riding
crop. All his gestures were calculated to give him the look of a
live and ferocious beast.
"So? You understand?"
I don't know where Gris is," I answered. "I thought he was in
Madrid."
The other officer raised his pale hand indolently. This indolence
was also calculated. I
saw through all their little schemes and I was stupefied to find
there were men who
amused themselves that way.
"You have a quarter of an hour to think it over," he said slowly.
"Take him to the
laundry, bring him back in fifteen minutes. If he still refuses he
will he executed on the
spot."
They knew what they were doing: I had passed the night in
waiting; then they had
made me wait an hour in the cellar while they shot Tom and
Juan and now they were
locking me up in the laundry; they must have prepared their
game the night before.
They told themselves that nerves eventually wear out and they
hoped to get me that

of 14The Wall (1939) | Jean-Paul Sartre
way.
They were badly mistaken. In the laundry I sat on a stool
because I felt very weak and
I began to think. But not about their proposition. Of course I
knew where Gris was; he
was hiding with his cousins, four kilometers from the city. I
also knew that I would not
reveal his hiding place unless they tortured me (but they didn't
seem to be thinking
about that). All that was perfectly regulated, definite and in no
way interested me.
Only I would have liked to understand the reasons for my
conduct. I would rather die
than give up Gris. Why? I didn't like Ramon Gris any more. My
friendship for him had
died a little while before dawn at the same time as my love for
Concha, at the same
time as my desire to live. Undoubtedly I thought highly of him:
he was tough. But it
was not for this reason that I consented to die in his place; his
life had no more value
than mine; no life had value. They were going to slap a man up
against a wall and
shoot at him till he died, whether it was I or Gris or somebody
else made no
difference. I knew he was more useful than I to the cause of
Spain but I thought to
hell with Spain and anarchy; nothing was important. Yet I was

there, I could save my
skin and give up Gris and I refused to do it. I found that
somehow comic; it was
obstinacy. I thought, "I must be stubborn!" And a droll sort of
gaiety spread over me.
They came for me and brought me back to the two officers. A
rat ran out from under
my feet and that amused me. I turned to one of the falangistas
and said, "Did you see
the rat?"
He didn't answer. He was very sober, he took himself seriously.
I wanted to laugh but
I held myself back because I was afraid that once I got started I
wouldn't be able to
stop. The falangista had a moustache. I said to him again, "You
ought to shave off
your moustache, idiot." I thought it funny that he would let the
hairs of his living being
invade his face. He kicked me without great conviction and I
kept quiet.
"Well," said the fat officer, "have you thought about it?"
I looked at them with curiosity, as insects of a very rare species.
I told them, "I know
where he is. He is hidden in the cemetery. In a vault or in the
gravediggers' shack."
It was a farce. I wanted to see them stand up, buckle their belts
and give orders
busily.
They jumped to their feet. "Let's go. Molés, go get fifteen men
from Lieutenant Lopez.

You," the fat man said, "I'll let you off if you're telling the
truth, but it'll cost you plenty
if you're making monkeys out of us."
"They left in a great clatter and I waited peacefully under the
guard of falangistas.
From time to time I smiled, thinking about the spectacle they
would make. I felt
stunned and malicious. I imagined them lifting up tombstones,
opening the doors of
the vaults one by one. I represented this situation to myself as if
I had been someone
else: this prisoner obstinately playing the hero, these grim
falangistas with their
moustaches and their men in uniform running among the graves;
it was irresistibly
funny. After half an hour the little fat man came back alone. I
thought he had come to
give the orders to execute me. The others must have stayed in
the cemetery.
The officer looked at me. He didn't look at all sheepish. "Take
him into the big
courtyard with the others," he said. "After the military
operations a regular court will
decide what happens to him."
"Then they're not... not going to shoot me?..."

"Not now, anyway. What happens afterwards is none of my
business."
I still didn't understand. I asked, "But why...?"
He shrugged his shoulders without answering and the soldiers
took me away. In the
big courtyard there were about a hundred prisoners, women,
children and a few old
men. I began walking around the central grass plot, I was
stupefied. At noon they let
us eat in the mess hall. Two or three people questioned me. I
must have known them,
but I didn't answer: I didn't even know where I was.
Around evening they pushed about ten new prisoners into the
court. I recognized
Garcia, the baker. He said, "What damned luck you have! I
didn't think I'd see you
alive."
"They sentenced me to death," I said, "and then they changed
their minds. I don't
know why."
"They arrested me at two o'clock," Garcia said.
"Why?" Garcia had nothing to do with politics.
"I don't know," he said. "They arrest everybody who doesn't
think the way they do."
He lowered his voice. "They got Gris."
I began to tremble. "When?"
"This morning. He messed it up. He left his cousin's on Tuesday

because they had an
argument. There were plenty of people to hide him but he didn't
want to owe anything
to anybody. He said, ' I'd go and hide in Ibbieta's place, but they
got him, so I'll go
hide in the cemetery.'"
"In the cemetery?"
"Yes. What a fool. Of course they went by there this morning,
that was sure to
happen. They found him in the gravediggers' shack. He shot at
them and they got
him."
"In the cemetery!"
Everything began to spin and I found myself sitting on the
ground: I laughed so hard I
cried.

· Introduction· What is CRF and its types· How is it different

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

More from LesleyWhitesidefv

More from LesleyWhitesidefv (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

· Introduction· What is CRF and its types· How is it different